


Theatre of Cruelty

by orphan_account



Category: BioShock
Genre: Evisceration, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:55:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Kyle Fitzpatrick has to help Cohen with a one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-lifetime spectacular show in the Medical Pavilion.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for Goretober! It's day one and I'm already in Bioshock hell, what a surprise. 
> 
> Some mentions of Cohen/Kyle but if the explicit violence warning doesn't bother you, you'll probably be fine. ;)

It takes Kyle Fitzpatrick a few moments to locate the lab coat, but when he does, he feels like a proper idiot for not noticing it sooner. Big cardboard box with “MEDICAL PROPS” written on the side in Cohen’s familiar scrawl, settled in the prop closet next to a pile of wrinkly dress shirts. And inside the box is the coat. (Of course Kyle checks first. It wouldn’t do to take the entire trip to the Medical Pavilion only to find he grabbed the wrong thing.) Not only is there a lab coat, there’s also a surgical mask, a scalpel, some callipers, and a pair of latex gloves. Lovely. Perfect. He folds the top of the box shut and hefts it into his arms, nudging the door to the prop closet shut with his shoulder as he leaves.

Just as Kyle walks past the theater, he hears one of the big grandfather clocks go off--ten shrill little brrrings, more tinny than a clock really ought to sound. He’s always hated those clocks. It was bad enough trying to organize the less glamorous aspects of Fort Frolic, mostly paperwork and the like, before Cohen had those damn things installed. 

“I know, I know,” he says, to no one at all. He runs as fast as he can to the metro station, still clutching the prop box. He gets one of the last bathys heading out of Poseidon Plaza. At this hour Kyle hadn’t expected anyone else would be leaving--but sure enough, a couple of ossified strangers lounge confidently against the glass just as he makes his way inside. The doors shut. 

“Hey, you doin’ alright?” one of them asks him. The backs of his ears burn. He must look nervous or something. He’s been riding in the bathys for years, of course. Since he was seventeen, as a matter of fact. But his stomach drops every time. Sometimes no matter how often you do something, you still can’t get over the initial fear response. 

“Of course,” he says. Does he sound defensive? Perhaps. He can smell what they’ve been drinking; the bathy smells strongly of vodka. Kyle turns his head away from them, pointedly, sniffing slightly. If he wanted to talk to drunk people, he would have gone to the theater.

“What’s with the box?” the other one says. He’s clearly more inebriated than his little friend. His words sound exaggerated and sloppy, like Hector when they hold Sunday rehearsals. 

“For your information,” Kyle says, “I am going to a meeting with Dr. Steinman and Sander Cohen.” That shuts them up. It always does. He doesn’t like to brag--he doesn’t have to--but sometimes when one is being harassed, one has to play the connections card. Of course, back in the day, that sort of statement would have been dazzling. Nowadays, neither Dr. Steinman nor Cohen are as big of names as they used to be. Bitterly, he thinks that their reputations must proceed them. 

Neither of the men speak to him for the rest of the bathy and they clamber off completely at the next stop, not sparing a look back, leaving him entirely alone. Kyle watches as the doors shut, only relaxing when they close completely. He hugs the box in his arms, tightly, like how lovers do. 

The performance should go well, he thinks. Very probably. Very likely. Kyle tries to reassure himself. Tries to remind himself that practice makes perfect and he’s practiced, damn it, practiced till he ached. Cohen used to appreciate that. These days it feels like no one notices how hard he works. He feels a little resentful, although he’d never admit so. The fact that Cohen is putting out all the smoke and mirrors all to impress Dr. Steinman. It’s ridiculous. Idly he thinks about wanting a cigarette, but he decides against it. Not even a cigarette will help this garish show. For the rest of the ride Kyle allows anxiety to overtake him, and he wonders if the performance will be a failure. It’ll be messy, he thinks. It’ll be melodramatic. Mostly, though, it’ll probably just be painful.

 

A few moments after the bathy spat him out, Kyle stood in the metro, trying to will himself to walk. He stands there still, lightly chastising himself. A bit late for stage fright, he thinks. A neon sign catches his eye: Sᴜʀɢᴇʀʏ. 

Not that he doesn’t see neon lights all the time--a man ought to get used to that sort of thing, working and living in Fort Frolic. Perhaps he’s merely looking to be distracted. Wouldn’t that be typical. Wouldn’t that be just the thing. Feeling a little disgusted, Kyle turns and walks toward Dr. Steinman’s Aesthetic Ideals, where he had been told to meet them. 

“--and as I always say, there’s scarcely a difference between an operating theater and the classical thing!” crows an all-too familiar voice. At least Kyle knows he’s in the right place. Adjusting the box so that it rests in his left hand only, he gives a gentle knock on the big metal doors with his right. No one comes, at first. He knocks again, harder this time. 

Cohen is the one to answer the door. He looks drunk. (That’s bad news. It’s always bad news, of course, when Cohen decides to give in to libations. It is especially worse news when they have a show to put on.) His normally pallid face is flushed deeply red, particularly on the hollows of his cheeks.

“Fitzpatrick!” Cohen says, sounding delighted in a way Kyle immediately recognizes to be put-upon. He tenses up, and Cohen digs his nails into his shoulder, leaning in. “You’re late.” 

“I’m sorry,” Kyle says, speaking in a half-whisper so as not to let Dr. Steinman hear them. Lord knows that’ll get him in more trouble--looks like the show is starting early, he thinks as he puts on a cautious smile for the doctor’s benefit. 

“Pleased to see you, Dr. Steinman,” he says, making sure to project. He looks around the room. Everything is antiseptic white--the fact that the room is very likely clean provides little comfort.

“What is he so happy about?” Dr. Steinman says, giving Cohen an incredulous look. 

“Sounds like someone hasn’t heard of bedside manner,” Cohen says. Already Kyle is feeling nauseous, but he tries to keep the same obsequious expression on his face.  
“Where should I set this down?” Kyle asks, gesturing to the prop box with his hand. Cohen waves him off. 

“Anywhere,” he says. “You needn’t worry about that. In the meantime,” he says, and he pauses just a little, his eyes looking dark and shiny like beetles, “why don’t you get into costume?” 

Kyle looks around again, searching for a divider of some kind, or a curtain, anything to provide even the appearance of modesty. Of course there isn’t one. Modesty was never in his job description.

“As you wish,” Kyle says numbly. He takes off his clothes, piece by piece. He tries not to look at Steinman or Cohen, because this is degrading and awful. Big shock--more sexual humiliation under Cohen’s employment. I hope this will be worth it, he thinks. He feels mortified. The room is cold enough that his nipples harden when his shirt moves as he unbuttons it. He moves slowly, like a corpse. His belt makes a tink! sound when it hits the floor. Somebody laughs. Cohen, probably, but he doesn’t know because he refuses to look up. By the time he’s standing in his briefs, he finds himself hoping that all his years of Catholic school will pay off, and that God Himself will come down from Heaven to kill him personally. His face is hot and itchy. His hands shake, slightly.

“Good boy,” Cohen says, and at this Dr. Steinman laughs a long, loud bark, like the noise a freight train makes. “Good boy” isn’t the worst thing Cohen has called him, but it ranks fairly highly.

“Should I…?” Kyle gestures towards the only flat surface in the room. You could call it a table, but it looks formless, shapeless, like a big red blob. You’d think for a man so concerned with aesthetics, he might take care to make his surgical theater look more inviting. Not that “inviting” is the point of surgery, but still. The “bedside manner” comment echoes in Kyle’s head and he feels like there are bugs crawling inside of him. 

“You may,” Cohen drawls. “You had that thing cleaned, right?” Cohen reaches into the box and pulls the gloves over his hands. “I’m a doctor, you know. I care about these things.”

“This show of yours better be worth the hype, Cohen,” Steinman says. “You better have a good reason for bringing in one of your--”

Clearly, for a second, words fail him. As he climbs up onto the cold table, Kyle feels a split second of relief. He lays back against it, staring into the fluorescent lights. Like the Sᴜʀɢᴇʀʏ sign before, he feels transfixed--or perhaps, like before, he merely craves a distraction from this horrible, humiliating scene.

He can hear Cohen’s footsteps and even smell the plastic on that doctor’s coat he’s wearing. He looks up and feels a deep jolt of terror. Illuminated by the fluorescent lights, Cohen looks like some kind of demon. The surgical mask has a small red blot in the center of it, a little greasy stain where Cohen’s lipstick must have pushed against the cloth. Kyle can feel his pulse in his throat. 

“Just like we practiced, starling,” Cohen murmurs. 

Somehow, Kyle doubts that.

“The most important part of surgery,” Cohen says, “is the first incision.” Cohen holds up the scalpel very ostentatiously--even Kyle can see it, from his vantage point on the operating table. 

“You’re wrong,” Dr. Steinman says, “but go on.”

With an indignant little growl, Cohen drags the scalpel down the middle of Kyle’s chest. It feels like he’s been set on fire, all the way down his chest. He screams even though he promised during rehearsals that he wouldn’t. His hands clamor for something to grab onto, but the table is flat and unforgiving as ever. At first when he cries he feels vindicated, like someone ought to come and help him, but when he cries his chest heaves and it hurts even more, so he tries and wills himself to stop. His eyes fall on Cohen. He glares down at him.

“You’re ad-libbing, Fitzpatrick,” he snaps. Kyle can barely focus on the words; he begins to stammer out an apology, Cohen drags the scalpel again, this time diagonally across his abdomen. Before he can process what’s happened, every bone in his body feels like it’s frozen as Cohen reaches his cold hand inside him, where the gash is, and pulls out a Something. (Who knows what it is? Not Kyle. It’s pinkish and roundish. Hopefully it’s not vital. Hopefully he doesn’t need it to play the fucking piano.) Cohen throws it down onto a little wheeled table. Kyle can’t think anymore. Thinking hurts. His teeth start chattering and he wonders if he’s dead already. 

“How’s this for a fad diet?” Cohen says. His voice is high and strained, like a violin that ought to be re-stringed. He makes another incision, this time down instead of across, down into Kyle’s stomach. Kyle hears this choking noise, wet and thin, and realizes vaguely that it’s coming from him. His hands still shake, grasping and ungrasping. He feels like a fish. It didn’t hurt nearly this badly last time they practiced. He wants to get up and run, but he’s afraid everything will fall out. That would make a horrible mess. 

For about a second he blacks out. He wakes up to Cohen slapping his face with that glove of his. It’s warm and wet--blood, he realizes. 

“I’m trying,” Kyle says. “I’m sorry.” He has to choke the words out. Talking hurts, but he has to talk. If he doesn’t talk, Cohen might decide he doesn’t care about proving himself to Steinman. He might decide not to test the limits of the medkits after all, might decide that Kyle is better as a body than he ever was as a musician.

“Stay focused, Fitzpatrick!” he barks, and Kyle nods. (At least, he thinks he nods. He can’t be sure.) Cohen reaches his gloves back into him, both of them this time, squeezing indiscriminately. 

“Isn’t this intimate?” he asks. Kyle blinks. (He knows he blinks. He can’t be sure whether or not he nods, but he knows he blinks.) “I’ve been inside you before, but never like this.” Kyle feels like a corpse.

Something plops out of his body, off the side of the table and onto the floor. The noise disturbs him more than anything else. He feels a new jolt of pain somewhere different, and it takes him a long time to figure out where the feeling is coming from. Not the stomach; that’s dull pain, that’s open-air pain, that’s the hurts-all-over sting. Mouth. It’s his mouth. He bit his tongue. He tastes blood. (He tastes blood all over.)

The last thing Kyle hears, as the corners of his eyes go black, is Cohen’s indignant reassurance to Dr. Steinman that yes, of course he knows what he’s doing. 

“I’ve got a doctorate, god damn it, a doctorate!” 

Something else falls to the floor. Kyle hopes someone will clean it up. The room was spotless before. He feels so guilty. So guilty. He suffers. He aches.


End file.
